Certain types of food products are especially difficult to cook quickly and uniformly. Bread is one such product. For proper cooking, the inside of the dough needs to be completely baked while the crust uniformly browns to the desired color. Conventional bread-baking ovens have various drawbacks.
For example, conventional ovens do not provide convenient access to electrical components of the ovens for servicing or other purposes. Typically, a control panel or other part must be disassembled to access electrical parts. Further, once disassembly enables access to the electrical components, the components are not mounted within the oven in a position or orientation for convenient servicing. Thus, there exists a need for an oven that provides convenient access to electrical components of the oven having the components mounted in a position and an orientation conducive to servicing of the components.
Another drawback of known ovens is that steam formed during the baking process is not disposed of in a desirable or efficient manner. Some ovens simply expel the steam into the atmosphere surrounding the oven (e.g., inside the baking room or restaurant). Other ovens expel the steam through an exhaust that leads to the outside atmosphere. Some ovens provide a self-contained steam condensing system, but a more efficient self-contained system is needed.
Drawbacks also exist in the steam generation systems used to inject water against heated rotating blower wheels to generate steam for the cooking process in existing ovens. For example, some water injection systems involve atomizers having complex designs in combination with the blower wheel to atomize injected water. Other water injection systems are simpler, but result in less efficient generation of steam. Further, in some water injection systems, some of the injected water does not turn to steam and subsequently contacts the product to be cooked (e.g., bread), undesirably affecting the cooking process. Thus, a simplified, more efficient water injection system is needed.
Finally, conventional convection ovens incorporate various types of systems for circulating hot gas (e.g., air) throughout the cooking chamber, including systems having a reversible, variable speed fan. However, such systems often fail to achieve uniform cooking of food in the cooking chamber.
There is a need, therefore, for an improved oven which meets one or more of the above needs.